Last week Living Social put up a deal where you bought a $20 Amazon Gift Card for $10! Over a million people bought it including me and some of my friends. What’s crazy is my friends got their gift card a day later…I haven’t!

Supposedly my gift card is still sitting in my account. I’ve tried contacting Living Social through their ticketing service and through their twitter account (where they’re very involved) and nothing. Not even a ‘we’re looking into it’ follow up message. They’re supposed to be a technology company and they can’t answer a simple question on Twitter?!

Come one guys, I can’t be the only one that hasn’t got that gift card yet! Why don’t you show a little decency and at least answer my messages. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re doing this, as a copycat of someone else’s idea (Groupon) what else can you expect.

So what are you going to do about it?

Delicious looks like it’s closing down at some point. At the moment I’m still using it but am already thinking ahead for a replacement. A few years ago I started using Diigo to experiment with it, at the time I decided to keep using Delicious as it seemed like a more focused product and also because I was very loyal to it.

With that said, over the last week I’ve been trying to go back to Diigo with no success. It seems my password no longer works and while Diigo let’s you reset it, I don’t get anything in my email from them. Another biggie is Diigo is well informed about Delicious’s possible demise and are very active on their Twitter account and I’ve repeatedly tried contacting them there but ‘no answer’. Huh?!

You would think that a company that’s opening their doors to users of a competing product would show some attention to them. Well I’ve gotten none of it. Is it so hard to simply answer ‘we’ll look into your problem as soon as possible?’ Because I know you’re active on Twitter and are answering other people’s questions, so why can’t you answer mine?

Seriously guys, I’ve used your service before and all I need is a password reset to start using it again. What are you going to do about it?

Related articles

• Yahoo! closing (?) Delicious. How to save your bookmarks. Do it now! (whatsnextblog.com)
• The Best Alternatives to Delicious [Video] (lifehacker.com)

Delicious

As mentioned above, it’s a the real king of social bookmarking. It was the first service that let users save, tag and search their bookmarks online. That fact that many of us have accumulated so many bookmarks since it’s inception provides infinite amount of filtered knowledge is staggering. You can have all your bookmarks online and also export them if needed.

Evernote

Started using it two years ago and it really has become my second brain as advertised. You can clip images, web pages, screenshots, save notes, clip certain paragraphs, save audio and docs. Most importantly it syncs with popular hand held devices. It’s all saved in the ‘cloud’ for you to access from anywhere there’s an internet connection.

Dropbox

If you exchange files between multiple computers then you know it’s a hassle to keep them up to date and a big time waster in doing so. Dropbox eliminates this problem, it installs a folder where you can add folders or files you want to keep synched between computers. And if you don’t have your computers at hand, you can access them through Dropbox’s website. Invaluable tool!

Xmarks

Same situation as above but with bookmarks and passwords. Suppose you get a new computer and have to transfer over all your passwords from your previous browser, pain in the butt right? Xmarks automatically synchs them to your new computer. It supports all popular browsers so no need to worry. And much like Delicious getting possibly shunned, it was also kept intact thanks to the loyal community that uses it.

Xobni

If you use Microsoft Outlook you know it’s search function is quite outdated. It’s just doesn’t cut it for people who have hundreds of thousands of emails saved. Through some nifty algorithms Xobni searches your emails for connections with the people you exchange emails with. What this does is create a very fast way to search for emails and attachments. It separates them and brings them to view for you in a very efficient manner. It’s a must have for MS Outlook power users.

Here’s a little motivation to get you going early in the week. Makes me want to run through a wall!

Fight for every inch

I asked for the XPS 15 to be the exchange system but Dell declined and said the XPS was the upgrade. So with that said I’m putting my new XPS 17 up for sale.

If you’re in the hunt for a desktop replacement that’s packed to the grills (see specs below), the XPS 17 is for you. I’ll sell it at the same price that’s on the website as that is basically the system I got: $950

Here are some pics of the system so you can see this is legit:

Here are the specs of the system:

• Genuine Windows® Home Premium, 64-Bit, English
• Intel® Core™ i5-460M (2.53GHz, 4 threads, turbo boost up to 2.8GHz, 3M cache)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 435M 1GB graphics with Optimus
• 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
• 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
• 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
• Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000
• Backlit Standard Keyboard – English
• Silver Anodized Aluminum 17.3″ HD+ (900p) WLED Display (1600×900 resolution)
  
• JBL 2.1 Speakers with Waves Maxx Audio 3
• HD Webcam with 720p streaming resolution

BTW I’m a sound junkie and can say that the sound coming from those JBL speakers is awesome. This is a desktop replacement and it’s ideal for gamers and designers.

Again, I’m selling the XPS 17 at $950. If you want it or have any questions, email me at: jorgea.barba@gmail.com

Dear Dell:

Yet again you’ve proven to be irresponsible. I just received my laptop and it still sounds like a blow-dryer, which means you didn’t fix my problem. I called you two days ago to check up on my laptop and you not only told me that it was still being tested but also that I would receive a call from one of the technicians to assure me the problem was fixed. It never happened.

That truth was that my laptop was on it’s way to me already. You lied to me. Now we’re in a difficult situation because I’m going to send it back to you and I plan on doing whatever it takes to get this fixed.

You’ve got yourself one very angry customer.

Jorge

Spartans! What is your profession?

Remember the scene above from the movie 300 when Daxos, the Arcadian, tells Leonidas that he’s no match for Xerxes army with only a handful of soldiers?

Then Leonidas asks a few Arcadians what their profession is and…

We can have all the professions we want in a team, but if the desire, guts and daring is missing then not much is going to happen.

The Spartans were committed to ‘defending their freedom’ and then letting everyone know how they did so with only 300 soldiers.  300 Spartans committed protecting their country even going so far as to smile at the chance of death. Talk about passion!

Desire, guts and daring!

Both books have big ideas. Below I’ve added a few videos where author Dan Heath explains some of the ideas from both books.

How to stand out in a crowded marketplace

Dan explains how Voodoo Donuts and Zipcar break patters to stand out.

How to make strategy simple so everyone understands it

Dan explains that in order to make it simple for people to understand abstraction, we need to dumb it down to help avoid decision paralysis. K.I.S.S!

How to write a mission statement that doesn’t suck

What’s your mission statement? To be your competitors. That’s how most all mission statements sounds like. Dan explains how to create one that shines!

Why change is so hard

Change is hard and it’s not because people are lazy, it’s because we get exhausted from trying to change.

How to really motivate people

Why did people volunteer to help Obama? Because they wanted to feel they were part of something bigger than themselves.

Want people to change?

If you want people to change you got to put feeling first.

Tim Ferriss tweeted this video earlier today! Enough said.

Yesterday I was reading Top Gear Magazine in which they feature the new SSC Aero II (above), a car that is set to take the speed record back from Bugatti. The full article is online and is well worth reading even if you’re not into fast cars, let me tell you why.

Making a supercar just to capture speed records is a very expensive undertaking and companies that build cars for this purpose alone end up losing money. The original SSC Ultimate Aero took seven years to build in a shed behind the owners house. The record was set on 12 mile stretch of U.S. Route 93 in Nevada which had to be closed for the event. The guy who broke the record was the co-founder of SSC, a 71 year old man who said he wished to reach 200 mph before he died! He didn’t wear any protective gear, no helmet and didn’t even get buckled up. He broke the record with a baseball cap on.

Very unconventional if you ask me.

On the other hand Bugatti does extensive testing at VW’s Ehra Lessien test track, and its 5.5-mile, four-lane-wide, dead-flat main straight, with gentle banked curves at either end.

As part of VW, Bugatti has tremendous resources at it’s disposal. Incredible engineering brainpower. They’ve been at this for years so you can’t question their ability to execute.

But…

Conventions are made to be challenged.

The point is that this is another case of the David vs Goliath story. How a small company of a few people challenges an incumbent with pure effort, undermining the incumbents superior ability.

For Shelby, doing 256mph was a lot more important than peeing high against a wall. If doing 256mph is a dicey business even when you own the road, the fact that SSC had done that speed gave the company instant credibility. They were no longer 16 guys in a shed. They were the designers and builders of an engine, a transmission, a chassis, an aero and cooling package that were more robust than any other on the planet at opposing the implacable violence of the speed-cubed law of drag.

To be continued…